Word of Salvation – Vol.06 No.52 – December 1960
The Proud Scattered
Sermon by Rev. A. I. de Graaf on Luke 1:51b
Scripture Reading: Psalm 2
Hymns: 344:1,2; 344:4 (after confession of faith); 78:3,4,5; 463
Translated by John Westendorp with some AI help from Google.
Translator’s note: early editions of ‘Word of Salvation’ still had some sermons in Dutch for the migrant communities that then made up the Reformed Churches of Australia.
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
You may know the proverb that ‘the bold have half the world.’ Yes, and that almost seems to be putting it very mildly!
Don’t they have the WHOLE world? IS it true that the meek have only the other half? Isn’t being meek in our world a terribly stupid idea, that doesn’t get you very far, makes you immortally ridiculous, and inevitably digs your own grave?
The brazen! The people with the big mouths, the people who dare, the self-enforcers, the I-sayers! Don’t they have the reins in their hands? Don’t they have the power?
And now we have celebrated Christmas, and one would sometimes think that this can only be the feast of the “little people”. The great of the earth pass it by with a smile. The bold of the world have other interests. But the oppressed and the despised have it, to keep themselves amused. Until they too shake their fists in helpless anger at the bronze heaven and cry out in their misery: is THAT a God, is THAT a Savior..?
That is the background of Christmas today. And it does not seem so rosy!
But… was it rosy in the days of Caesar Augustus? Our text today is from the canticle of Mary. And if we let Mary tell us the background of HER life, what would HER story be?
Daughter of David’s royal house! But it was a bygone glory.
Her own people were controlled by a foreign power from Rome, and within the country itself it was the self-confident Pharisees and Sadducees who thought themselves to be the righteous core of the people, and who said with contempt of God’s people: “This multitude, this multitude that knows not the law is accursed.”
This little self-employed lass, betrothed to the little self-employed carpenter of Nazareth, had to travel in an advanced state of pregnancy, through rough country and in a hot climate, on overcrowded roads, because one of the few great men of the earth wanted to know how many of these people he governed.
It did not interest him that such a small and insignificant person could not find a place in the crowded Bethlehem, because she could not show gold to greedy hotel owners, who also wanted to profit from it. She became, what thousands are, even today: a “displaced person”, kicked from one place to another, as Georgiu in his book “The Twenty-fifth Hour”, pictures it so incredibly hard and sharply….!
No place for an insignificant little person looking for shelter, no place for an impoverished king’s daughter with her coming child, no place but the stable, just as today for thousands of such people there is no place but in a camp.
But the bold and the proud, THEY do have a place!
Always had it…!
Ever since Lamech, who boasted, “I killed a youth for a bruise, and a man for a wound,” there have been people who force their way through the world, and then the little word “I” becomes a bulldozer, crushing everything that stands in their way.
Oh , Mary knew all about it too! And when SHE goes to sing her song, her song of praise to the great works of God, then that song of praise stands in the middle of the world, then we hear there about small people, a humble servant, but also about the powerful, the proud, and the rich.
Then we also see in that song the contrast in the world as it was then and as it still is today.
And then let it be clear to us that IN THIS WORLD God wanted to come to make it Christmas, that into THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, which God in heaven knows even better than Mary, and even better than you and I, HE HIMSELF, THE WORD THAT BECAME FLESH, wanted to descend.
And to HIMSELF came a reality that thousands of people today complainingly call the fate of the common people, because the waltzing and the I-saying, proud and arrogant people crushed Him, and He, for whom there was no place in the world when He was yet to be born, ended His life on a cross, which Rome’s world power and Israel’s religious leaders had hammered together for this Man who said that He was King!
Is that, is THAT my King?
Brothers and sisters, from the song of praise of THIS Mary, THIS ‘displaced person’ from the first century, we lift up today that one word. That God “SCATTERS THOSE WHO ARE PROUD IN THEIR INMOST THOUGTS.”
And in this we want to listen to what GOD, the High and Lofty One, the Maker of heaven and earth, of people and things, has to say to us in it.
Yes, in that song of praise of Mary, we hear not only the soft tones of the grace and love of God, although that is of course very important. We hear not only that God has looked upon His Servant, and that He wants to offer His wealth to POOR people, there is not only the whispering of the soft silence in this song of praise, but also the violence of the storm!
That is the wonder of this simple woman’s song of praise, and that is the wonder of Christmas!
Christmas is God’s mighty act in the midst of THIS WORLD!
This world, which Mary seems to know well, because GOD, who inspired her to write this psalm, knows her well, at least as well as we humans all know each other!
And then we hear of the mighty coming down from their thrones, the proud being scattered in the imaginations of their hearts, and the rich being sent away empty.
These are words that would have been fitting for an Elijah: “THUS SAYS THE LORD!”
Or for a Moses: “We are consumed in Your wrath, and in Your anger we are terrified….!”
Yes, and precisely for that reason: then also for Mary, because they are the words of GOD, of GOD who STILL shows that he has the reins of world government in his hands and who KNOWS our world, better than we do, and who comes precisely INTO this world with HIS great grace, with His Son, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. And who says that He judges and scatters the PROUD.
Who are the proud?
Brother and sister, as the mighty man has his power and the rich man his money, so the proud man has HIMSELF. The proud man is the I-sayer, the self-assertor. He is the self-sufficient one, who, whether openly out in the world, or in his own house, or in his work, or even in his church, has a throne, and he sits upon it himself.
I think of Nebuchadnezzar, boasting, “Is not this the GREAT BABEL that I have built?” and throwing men into the fiery furnace because they would not bow down to the golden image that HE has made….!
I think of Darius, who can no longer suppress the smile of self-satisfaction when his courtiers say that he is no longer a human being, but a God, to whom all his subjects must PRAY as the only one who can give life and happiness, and whoever does not want that, well, let him get tossed to the lions!
How this history has repeated itself!
Pharaoh of Egypt dreamed this of himself, and, thinking he had power over death and life, he ordered that the baby boys of the Israelites be thrown to the crocodiles!
The emperors of Rome would dream it of themselves, and so the Christians who would not sacrifice for Caesar’s glory went to the arena and the stake… and to the lions!
Hitler dreamed it, and he thought he could exterminate peoples and found a New Aryan Race, a kingdom that would rule forever, a MASTER race, and he, the Lord of LORDs at its head…! And through all these historical figures, who are still so frighteningly relevant today, and where a small mortal like Maria for example… or you or I, feels anxiously pushed away, you hear the riotous song of Psalm 2 resound:
“Why do the peoples rage, and the nations plot a vain thing?
The kings of the earth take their stand,
and the rulers conspire together
against the LORD and against his anointed:
let us break their bands,
and cast their ropes from us!”
But that same history, brother and sister (for GOD writes the book of history) lets you SEE how these proud ones are scattered, as the psalm goes on to say:
“He who sits in heaven, LAUGHS,
” the Lord MOCKED them.”
Nebuchadnezzar had to bow down to Daniel, because he, a simple servant of God, could tell him his dream, Nebuchadnezzar got the fright of his life when FOUR MEN laughed at the heat of HIS fiery furnace, and when he had not yet learned his lesson, he ate grass like a cow and the proud man became less than an animal….! And now he is nothing but a pile of dust.
The proud scattered! Pharaoh of Egypt felt the smiting hand of God. He lost his slaves, he lost his son, and when he STILL resisted the Most High, he lost his life in the raging waters of the Red Sea, and now he is nothing but dust. And mighty dust is still dust: they may have built pyramids many meters high for that dust, but a handful of uranium is worth more today than the ashes of their once so feared bodies!
And so I could go on. “He who lives in heaven laughs!”
Where is Emperor Augustus? Where is Hitler, where is Stalin?
Where are they then, those little people, who had placed their I on the throne over the world? Where are they then, who worshipped THEMSELVES as saviors of men?
The proud… scattered…!
And then I hear Psalm 73: “…until I went into the sanctuary of God, AND I KNEW THEIR END.”
And that is a great comfort.
For Mary and for the Christians in the time of Rome’s emperors, and for the oppressed in the Russian Gulag camps, and for you and for me.
But is that all?
Again I ask you and myself, in the Name of Him who shall overturn the order of the world, and dethrone the mighty, and impoverish the rich, but exalt the humble:
WHO ARE THE PROUD?
And then I also see them popping up in the church.
And of course you think of the Pharisee. With his prayer: “Lord, I this and I that….!
Then we see Peter pushing forward; Lord, even if they all forsake You, I… will not.
And I think of how the Popes of Rome called themselves successors of Peter; they called themselves “servus servorum dei”, servant of the servants of God, but in fact they took upon THEMSELVES the POWER to be governor of the Lord Jesus on earth, and thus stood between the believers and their Savior….!
But Peter’s pride cost him dearly. And he, who quarreled with his brethren as to who should be the greatest, was unmasked as the little unfaithful coward who denied his Lord. This proud man also was SCATTERED in the thoughts of his heart.
Oh, and then we don’t have to look only at the Pharisee and the Pope or Peter…., then I hope that it will already become clear to you, where the LORD God wants to go with us today. Because we can scoff at the great ones of the earth, and rejoice over the thunder of God’s judgments, that will break loose over His enemies, according to the mighty word of Psalm 2 and the mighty word of the mother of the Lord, Mary, but doesn’t the Holy Scripture say, that we must rejoice WITH trembling?
Because now for the third time: WHO IS AN ARROGENT PERSON?
If you were on the other side of the line, and you had the say in the world, if you had the power of money …over nations, or the power of a bishop over a church, or the control of a large corporation, what would be YOUR motivation?
What is your motivation NOW? What is your ATTITUDE NOW?
You notice that when another little person, just like you, comes too close to you. You notice that already in your normal interactions with your peers, you notice that already in your family, when it comes to saying to one of your children: “That’s what Dad did wrong, Dad regrets that.” You notice that already in your church, and in your circle of friends.
You will notice this when you REALLY ask for GOD’S searchlight in the darkest corners of your heart: “Search me, and know my heart, O Lord, and see if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting…..!”
Let us then be very honest with ourselves. And with Him, who SCATTERS THE PROUD in the thoughts of his heart.
For whose life does NOT revolve around his own self? Simeon will say it correctly soon: “The Lord Jesus, when he comes, will be for a FALL and a RISING for many in Israel…! …and the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.”
That Child in the manger, we can sing about that touchingly, we can weave a nice atmosphere around it, but to come down from our THRONE and then KNEELING, kneeling next to that wretch who insulted me, kneeling as an equal next to a whore or a traitor, kneeling as a small and broken person, kneeling as a SICK PERSON who seeks healing from THIS Child, Oh, that is so difficult.
To be meek, because you know yourself, ….who can do that?
Ever since Adam wanted to be like God, knowing Good and Evil, pride has been our worst sin. Our pride. And there are even people who are secretly proud of being… so humble.
And now Christmas has passed, and with this pride all our Christmas blessing and our Christmas peace are at stake. Because that is clear enough. That Child, that Son of Man, that Man of Sorrows, He did not come as a friendly and good Santa Claus to pat us on the back, but He came to make us all ASHAMED,
For we are to blame that He, the Sinless One, had to be born as a ‘displaced person’ in a stable, and there we stand: next to the Emperor of Rome with all his egoistic self-deification.
And it was not the Jews who nailed Him to the cross, but every time we say I instead of “He” it is a hammer blow on the nails in His hands.
ME with my interests, ME with my wishes,… in church, in my family, at work, towards my fellow man, towards God! As long as I STAND – on MY point, in MY right, for MY cause, for MY principles – as long as I STAND I have not really had Christmas, As long as it is ME and not: “HE” (and there are hundreds of things by which I can test that in my life), I have not had a Christmas.
Then there is the JUDGMENT of God, the JUDGMENT of the scattering of the proud – not just in their character flaw which they cannot help, but – the Bible says, that is it: IN THE INTENTIONS OF THEIR HEART.
Arrogant, you are that deliberately and knowingly, because you do not want to bow down. Because you think you are good enough in yourself.
And when this Child has come into your life, you will notice it! Oh, may God grant that you will notice it; how difficult it is for you to be meek, to efface yourself, to – even when other people are there, even when your enemy is next to you – to KNEEL. To kneel before the Child who came in the manger, and to say to it:
O little Child, O tender Child,
Thou art for sinners the only salvation,
the chosen Lord!
Not by my election,
but by God’s undeserved grace.
Those who consider this jut theory because – as they say – real life is different; those who do not want to prove this to their neighbour with words and certainly not with deeds, they will come under the JUDGMENT of dispersion.
Brother, sister, it is Christmas. Mary rejoiced that GOD will set the world, which was upside down, right again.
The proud scattered!
The rich sent away empty!
But the hungry filled with God’s salvation!
Do you want to be comforted?
Do you hunger for this salvation of God, because you know yourself to be but a small and poor sinner before Him?
Pray for the guidance of the Spirit of Him who said (and He was the King of heaven and earth), ”Learn of Me; for I am gentle and HUMBLE in heart.”
Pray to God, that we may learn to kneel. Okay, a Calvinist does not like to kneel. The excuse is then, that this is so Roman Catholic. But is not the reality that he WANTS TO REMAIN STANDING, like the sturdy oak tree, standing even before God?
Oh, pray to that Child in the manger, for the grace to become small again; to be able to humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you in due time!
For the SICK ones came the Physician, that Child Jesus! Let us in His Name stop pretending to be better than we are. We are but poor wretches, who can only live by grace and God’s free GIFT!
Oh, to grow in that, in that humility, in that meekness, that is grace and joy, because it is to live again for God, and then to have your hands filled with HIS salvation,
Oh the grace to get rid of that miserable I-saying! Paul learned that. He GREW in it. The closer he came to the Lord Jesus, the more he grew IN THAT. In one of his first letters (1Corinthians) he writes that he is NOT WORTHY TO BE CALLED AN APOSTLE…! In a later letter it is said: “I am less than the least of the saints”, and just before his death, when the battle is almost over, he calls himself the chief of sinners.
But he says: I have been shown mercy!
And precisely because he is so deeply humbled, he can see this so well, and that is precisely why his joy for the Lord Jesus is so great!
No, someone who comes closer to Jesus will not find his sins less, but rather his Savior greater!
Of THESE people Mary’s song of praise says that they will be filled.
Of these people the Lord Jesus says: BLESSED ARE THE MEEK, for they shall INHERIT THE EARTH!
That proverb: the bold own half the world, is therefore wrong.
Yes, even that the meek will have the other half, however optimistic, improbably optimistic that may sound today, is still wide of the mark!
In God’s Kingdom, which has come, as the kingdom of the Child in the manger, of God’s Son in the form of a servant, washing the feet of miserable sinners, in that kingdom it will be the MEEK who may rule WITH Him, THROUGH Him, FOR Him.
Only those who were reborn in humility are of the heavenly race.
By GRACE you, YOU TOO, can be saved. Do you want that?
Amen.
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